Small Biz, Big Business Spirit

Four-year-old Cameron Frueh has a glass of lemonade to sell you. He's not telling you what to pay for it, but by way of a hint, the last customer left a $1,600 check in his money jar. True story.

Cameron and his siblings, as it turns out, spent this autumn running what is perhaps Greater Cincinnati's most unusual lemonade stand. Camping out on a busy corner of Erie Avenue in Hyde Park, the Frueh family raised something close to $7,500 for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. And that's a whole lot of Dixie cups.

"It was for all the people who don't have homes in New Orleans," says Cameron, whose aunt lives in that region. A wall of water, specifically a 24-foot surge, "knocked down her house."

The whole Frueh family helped in the entrepreneurial endeavor, including siblings Clayton, 3, Bella, 14, Grania, 16 and even cousin Taylour McMullen, 6.

A New Orleans theme was evident: "We decorated the lemonade stand with beads and a bright gold tablecloth," notes Bella, who penned the stand motto "Lemon-aid" and helped manage it during rush-hour traffic.

Mom and dad Laurie and Doug are proud, understandably — if a bit pooped (especially after publicity on such national media outlets as the CBS "Early Show").

"We went through two very large Sam's Club lemonade [containers] and eight smaller Kroger ones" a day, says Laurie. "We would have lulls, and then lots of people would line up."